Electronic commerce today is comprised of a collection of closed communities. Examples of such communities include local and long distance telephone companies, cable companies, cellular telephone companies, E-mail services, and electronic service providers such as Prodigy and CompuServe. Customers must enroll in each community in order to use the products and services provided. Thus, prior identification of the payer is required before electronic delivery of merchandise or services. The operator of the service can then either bill the customer, credit his/her loan account, or debit his/her deposit account.
With the advent of high-speed networks delivering entertainment and information on demand, the current billing and payment systems will be flooded with transactions. Consequently, the customer will be bombarded by invoices with numerous items for each billing period. Moreover, the customer's lifestyle will be exposed to each system operator due to the non-anonymous nature of the transactions.
One method of anonymous payment is described in my PCT patent application WO 93/10503 entitled "Electronic-Monetary System" published May 27, 1993, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. That application discloses an electronic monetary system for implementing electronic money payments as an alternative medium of exchange to cash, checks, credit cards, debit cards, and electronic funds transfers. In particular, the described system uses money modules packaged in tamper-proof housings to store and transfer electronic notes.
Money module payments may be either real-time, off-line payments between money modules (e.g., between a money module contained within a customer's "electronic wallet" and a money module contained within a merchant's point-of-sale terminal), or on-line payments for network services such as information retrieval and telephone calls, or for purchasing airline tickets, theater tickets, etc.
However, a serious problem with remote, anonymous purchase is the security of payment and delivery. If one wants to purchase a movie over the telephone anonymously, then how can the buyer be assured he will receive the movie if he pays first, or the seller be assured that he will be paid if he delivers the movie first? Thus, when purchasing anything from a remote location, it is customary today for the buyer and seller to first identify themselves, leading to a consequent loss of privacy.